Nice! But in the case of Govt, we need to clearly (re)define what actually constitutes an "effective dose" at a societal level. Too much time has passed from the creation of the original documentation and many things exist now that did not exist then. I think it's time for an update on both the user manual and the developer's API documentation :)
Think of trying to operate a current piece of software using the (printed and never updated) instruction manual from 1992 (let alone 1776). That would not go very smoothly. Since Govt functions sort of like civilization's operating system, then most people would agree that means to keep a "relatively smoothly running civilization" it is very important to keep not just the documentation up - the OS software itself needs to be up to date on patches and documentation. And only occasionally add new features - but only after extensive functional, regression and user acceptance testing...
Congress currently patches the things incessantly (new legislation) but in a seemingly random manner. I have yet to see anything resembling a comprehensive project development plan for how "enhancements" and bug fixes are elicited consistently from the customer/citizen base (oh wait, we're not the "real" customers anymore are we, even though we're paying for it), evaluated for both feasibility and affordability, or prioritized. There also does not seem to be any opportunity for code review - they promote freaking alpha code to production overnight without 98% of the "dev team" even getting a chance to read it once! And there's certainly little to no functional, regression or user acceptance testing before changes are rolled out to production. Hell, they don't even smoke test half the time :)
Without clearly defined criteria between what is required functionality vs what is excessive (unsolicited scope creep features) or defective (bugs) functionality, they keep on taking another foot (or 5280) every time you close your eyes to catch a nap (who even gets a full night's sleep anymore). OK, enough half-wired programmer analogies - maybe it's time to pull the plug for just a few minutes, roll back to a much earlier and less bug-riddled OS version release and reboot the damn system - while we figure out whether it's a massive code review/purge of buggy functions, or a full re-write that is needed....
Thomas Jefferson proposed this. He said that rather than all Americans being bound by laws passed by previous generations, all laws should sunset after a fixed period of time. Necessary laws would be passed again. Most laws would be repealed automatically as the clock ran out on them.
If that sunsetting of laws had become the rule, Americans would probably be free today.
Government is not the operating system of civilization, the free market is. Government is just supposed to be the spam blocker or malware protection. Nothing more.
I'm not either - but programming, at it's core, is about workflow and process, and how you deal with exceptions and edge cases. Maintaining a working civilization requires some kind of ongoing workflow and process. It doesn't HAVE to be computerized, but in this day and time much of it already is, so unless or until the power goes out for good :), then that's what we're working with ....
I agree with the premise of your post: humans are humans, not machines, not some alchemical creation, and not computers. We are a specific and unique type of creature. In that vein, I’ve gravitated towards two conceptual ideas that seem to “fit” us: Robin Dunbar’s “number,” and Rene Girard’s take on mimetics, mimetic crisis, and scapegoating. At base we are tribal organisms, and it’s best to try to clean up the systems we create north and south of 150-500 grouped individuals.
I recall reading somewhere about the size of the underground economy being directly proportional to the tax rate. I see a return to barter in a completely disintermediated economy on the horizon.
It’s probably a good idea to have a cache of stuff you can trade in various amounts. “Durable consumables” come to mind.
Mother-in-law said this was popular in the 70s (and we’re reliving the economy of the 70s, and it’s about to go back to 1929, but I digress), anyway, she said that IRS agents would show up at swap meets and gather information about the people there. I believe there are multiple tax court cases on the matter from then. “All income from whatever source derived.” They mean it. Unless your name starts with an H and ends with an R, you are expected to report all income like a good little serf.
All true. Again, I'm not advocating breaking laws. But there are limits to what the govenrment can detect and collect. Hypothetically, neighbors who informally barter labor (e.g. baby sitting for yard work) might be an example. Of course, modern economies cannot run with barter. On the other hand, there's a certain elegance in the near-impossibility of the IRS collecting tax or placing a lien on "I promised to mow Bob's lawn next month."
They will certainly do their best to extort all they can. But then the government has to start being the arbiter of the value of everything. If I give you a piglet in exchange for a hen, what’s the tax? We could both claim the net income was zero since we obviously assigned equal value to piglet and the hen. If the dentist cleans the barber’s teeth in exchange for a haircut, who would know? This goes on all the time, as well it should. The more intrusive the tax man, the more devious people are in avoiding him.
Well, if Mara lago is worth 18 million when an empty 2 acre lot next door is worth 200 million, my home is worth about $250 dollars. I guess they will need to adjust my property taxes accordingly.
Perhaps the bank should be prosecuted for also over valuing the property and then standing to make financial gains by charging interest on an overly large loan amount ?
This is one of the many reasons that I think Wilson was the worst president of the United States. A couple of presidents did a lot of damage because they were stupid (Biden and Buchanan). Nothing can compare to the long term damage incurred from this motherfucker's actions. Income tax, Federal reserve system, league of nations (UN), senators chosen by popular vote, US involvement in WW1 (this led to Hitler and the BIS) and don't forget he was a eugenist. So if you wanted to stick a pin in the timeline to indicate when it turned to shit, here it is.
Exactly. Although some stretch it back to the earlier genesis of the Progressive movement, I stick with the asshole known as Woodrow Wilson. Don't forget the forced draft in his list of 'accomplishments'.
The income tax is not only a Constitutional tax, it is also a very desirable tax. Applied in strict adherence to its statutory design, the income tax is benignly-limited in scope. It is also a fit mechanism by which those who make money from the exploitation of public resources return to the common purse a portion of their private profits.
The problem is, you are probably being fooled into believing that the income tax applies to you, which for most Americans, it doesn't. However, like "safe and effective" if we're told a big enough lie often enough, we rarely question it. And the lie you've been propagandized to believe is that the income tax applies to you when it does not.
In "The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Michael Grant, he uses that same example (a private livestock exchange between two farmers, over their shared back fence to assure secrecy) to demonstrate how Rome in its terminal imperial stage had indeed made itself the arbiter of value of all things created, traded, bought or sold by its citizens. As Grant tells it, the farmers were obligated to locate a Roman tax collector, report the exchange and pay the requisite tax. The penalty for not reporting the transaction was death.
The difference between the collapsing Roman Empire and our devolving American one is that we already have the automated and regulatory infrastructure in place to surveil every human interaction (because: to keep us safe!), to account for every calf, lambkin, and kid (because: to determine the CO2 each creates!) and to make legible every barter transaction (because: tax reporting already applies to barter https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420).
What's missing is the death penalty piece, but with IRS SWAT teams having become a thing for what in essence is a mere administrative crime enforced by CPA's, I'm pretty sure that at the critical psychological juncture we'll all be treated to wave-after-lurid-wave of body-cam footage of accidental murders of citizens, their children and their dog (Real? Staged? DeepFake? Who knows?) in raids-gone-bad over a $12 barter transaction, until the citizenry gets the message and feels the threat. Then, when the IRS auditor is sitting in one's living room perusing his thick file in tense silence, how long will it be before a citizen wonders aloud: "Can a fellow retroactively file a 1099 on a barter he might hypothetically have forgotten to include under gross income?"
It won't be you and me, Lon. We're rocks. It'll be the other guy (our stinking, weaselly weasel of a counterparty) that turns us in. But we're caught, none-the-less. And then it's our turn to make the same deal: "This all goes away if I get ten Barter 1099's, with names I don't already have." Pretty soon the whole country will be rolled up tight by less than ten percent of its population. (The weaselly ten percent.)
Also: Dentists, barbers? Really? The Iron Rule is never barter with anyone whose rice bowl requires a license from the state. That button always gets pushed first! Right away; no exceptions. People who have lived their whole professional lives inside the velvet rope of a licensed cartel will do whatever they need to do -- without batting an eye or shedding a tear. I think we all know that by now.
The income tax is not only a Constitutional tax, it is also a very desirable tax. Applied in strict adherence to its statutory design, the income tax is benignly-limited in scope. It is also a fit mechanism by which those who make money from the exploitation of public resources return to the common purse a portion of their private profits.
The problem is, you are probably being fooled into believing that the income tax applies to you, which for most Americans, it doesn't. However, like "safe and effective" if we're told a big enough lie often enough, we rarely question it. And the lie you've been propagandized to believe is that the income tax applies to you when it does not.
Hello Dawn (or as we say here in America, Good Morning),
Just last evening I was reading "Tragedy & Hope 101" by Joe Plummer, who makes an interesting observation about the income tax that dovetails neatly with your posts on this thread. Plummer, leaning heavily on Quigley of course while also critiquing and correcting him, builds the case that before earning the Democrat nomination for president, Wilson secretly agreed to a raft of stipulations put to him by the men behind the curtain, Carroll Quigley's Network, who were making his grandiose ambitions come true. Plummer asserts, and it's hard to deny now looking back, that Col. E.M. House was Wilson's surreptitious handler on behalf of the Network, as well as its political point man charged with making the stipulations happen by any means necessary. Both the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax Amendment were on the list of stipulations agreed to well ahead of Wilson's being sworn in. It appears Wilson was simply not interested in looking into either initiative before getting behind them, taking credit for their supposed benefits for the common man, and getting them into law. House took care of the details. We now know that the Federal Reserve system was a Trojan Horse for those that we in this generation call the Banksters; it was a soup-to-nuts fraud and psy-op. Your assertion that the Income Tax is cut from the same cloth as The Fed is congruent with Plummer's and Quigley's observations about it, as well as those made by many others. It must be said that I've heard them before but that my research ended when I was assured by a tax partner at a white shoes Manhattan firm that he had looked into it all himself. It was all bullshit, he told me years ago.
Funny how much more we know now about both The System and the personal weaknesses of our friends and neighbors who serve and profit by it. Upton Sinclair was right.
Applying the Iron Rule of Barter, above, that those with state licenses, like a law license, will do or say whatever they need to to remain members in good standing of their cartel, in his case the NY State Bar, I've decided to delve more deeply into your work. Subscribed.
Yes, but what they don’t want you to know is that “income” has a very specific definition that is NOT “all that comes in,” though they benefit immensely because through over a century of propaganda they have made you believe that.
I enjoy your enthusiasm, but the courts have upheld the “all income” doctrine, and will throw out as “frivolous” any case trying what you’re proposing.
No sir, you are misinformed by over a century of propaganda about what the law says and the courts have said.
"The Income Tax IS Only Written And Administered As An Excise On Privilege"
"...the tax law, as written, confines itself carefully and scrupulously to nothing but gains resulting from the exercise of federal privilege, just as any federal excise tax must do.
It is not by accident or oversight that, for instance, the "wages" subject to the tax, or the phrase "trade or business" as used in the context of the tax, are custom-defined in the law."
Good luck with that. I’m a licensed CPA, I deal with tax law every day. My life is very boring most of the time. You can go before a judge and argue what you’ve written there, and if large enough amounts of money are involved, you will go straight to jail, do not pass Go! and do not collect $200. I’m in the middle of a deadline and multiple clients’ tax messes, but perhaps after the deadline I’ll write a post citing the plethora of “frivolous” court cases. If I want to spend my free time playing in Checkpoint Riag. Hmm, maybe not. Anyway, yes, good luck to you!
Must be a busy time. We have to pay a big tax bill within the next couple of weeks. Our little music business has had a lot of gigs and no one takes out our taxes. But they do come for it
Yes, and as a "licensed CPA" I doubt you've ever actually read the tax code. I know because I fired mine because he hadn't read it either. After he couldn't (or refused to) answer my questions about the definitions of "trade or business," "wages," "employee," etc.
Using prepared software or relying on "opinions" of others who benefit from the fraud is not the same thing as reading the code and knowing for yourself what it does and does not say. As an Enrolled Actuary I was very familiar with Title 26 and actually bothered to read it.
But please, if you have free time to play along, I don't mind reviewing your work. But don't be surprised to find that you have been lied to, and have been lying to others, for your entire career. Of course, that begs the question - you are relying on your career to pay your own bills so playing along with the fraud is profitable for you. Can you say, "conflict of interest?"
I think it was James Wesley, Rawles who said, "In the future, a 12-gauge shell will be a $10 bill, a .223 cartridge a $5, and .22LR's singles," or words to that effect.
A decent HAM radio costs about $25. If you stock up on petroleum jelly and use the radio for early warning you can lube up to prepare for what's coming.
I m an MD in private practice. I own a practice, small business that employs about 40 people and has revenues in the multiple millions.
All in: the gov at various levels, state, local, federal. claims, confiscates / collects between 65-75 percent of all the money this business makes.
It is a privately held business and all the "profits " are passed through to the partners. My personal income tax rates is 45-50 percent and when you add in sales taxes, fees, on everythying I buy like gas, consumer products etc, ( I have tracked all this) , I pay 60-70 percent of my income in taxes.
My business is subject to payroll tax, numerous fees and taxes on utilities..
And then of course there is the dead weight loss of the MASSIVE stifling cost of compliance with all manner of burdensome regulatory schemes... paperwork, billing... for which I have to have additional staff, computer infrastructure. and more.
eventually all of this is going to come crashing down around us. We are already seeing it as interest rates rise and every single bank in the country is underwater.
its sad, its heartbreaking. Cause Im 55 and grew up in northern NJ in the 1970s... It seemed like things were heading in the right direction in the 1980s and part of the 90s. People say things are cyclical, that things will improve. the problem is really the level of federal debt. We cant unwing the debt and "red tape" without some massive re adjustments and pain. The convulsions and displacements that will result from this could be relatively peaceful and brief if we let free markets and reason hold sway, but I dont trust gov around the world to do the right thing. We might be facing hyperinflation , civil unrest, civil and or world war again.
Helps to be ready... ammo, food, fuel, hope for the best expect the worst
I am so sorry you're having to deal with all of that. It's the same in our business, which is also highly regulated. The "powers that be" are pushing independents into joining bigger and bigger corporations, and then the boards of these corporations act like government entities. Please hang in there--we so desperately NEED independent doctors to help pull us through this wall of fire. I'm hoping there's greater freedom on the other side of it, as many people are waking up and speaking out.
the consolidation is a very disturbing trend. its not being driven by market forces. T he gov and bureacracy have imposed perverse incentives on so many industries that destroy competiution and drive up costs . When there are only a few large companies in any sphere the gov regulates them and we have a crony capitalist / corporatist/ fascist state in place.
not "like" IS. Its an extortionary parasitical relationship.... no difference morally from gangsters or the mob... except the "state" has somehow convinced millions of dupes of its moral legitimacy and inevitability.
gov says to me " thats a really nice medical practice you have here , it would be shame if something would happen to it.... you pay us 60 percent of collections and we will make sure nothing happens to it. "
if you object to this "arrangement" they lock you in a cage.
Thanks for that series of posts, Man-i. I was in practice up until 2000 and was fighting all the things you mentioned, but could see that the dark forces were steering us directly towards the present circumstances you describe.
Thanks for reading and responding. I never took any of those shots and I was persecuted by the other docs around me. I was kicked off the staff of the Valley Hosp in Ridgewood New Jersey. Although they never reported me to the National Practicioner Data Bank because on some level, they know that they’re wrong they’re just too cowardly to admit it.
I had other doctors threaten to stop referring patients to me
I had one colleague call me reckless and irresponsible. Another one called me selfish.
I actually offered to volunteer at this hospital early on in the pandemic, because I knew that I was not at personal risk of death from Covid. I even offered to give my two vaccine doses at the hospital acquired for us to an older, semi retired partner, and they refused.
I have one other female colleague, actually question my “ manhood”
Most of the doctors in this northern New Jersey area behaved like hysterical, cowardly idiots and were wrong about everything
I’ve seen the same behavior with former colleagues I’m still in touch with. There is a “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” effect in play, but the outlook of private practice doctors vs. employees is substantially different. But even so, most doctors are among the most brainwashed, perhaps because of the fear factor. They were drilled over and over again how at risk they were for horrible death, to be brought to them by their patients. Now that they and their colleagues and friends are suffering vaxx injuries, perhaps they are beginning to open one eye and question?
We work in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, and all of our income, or almost all of our income, is salary, so we’re subjected to burdensome confiscatory taxation
Most doctors now majority of them work for large medical systems. They are not independent anymore. Most of them are salaried employees, and they will just go along with whatever the large corporate or government controlled medical organization does.
As a lifelong and now retired employer I must add that the “matching portion” of social security and medicare payments employers are obliged to pay is also not seen by employees and a huge impediment to profitability, not to mention all the other employee costs.
And so there's little-to-no appreciation of the business owner, by the employee--except under the rare circumstance where individual employees have somehow gained knowledge of these onerous, confiscatory employer/business owner requirements AND have not been philosophically corrupted against the morality of laissez-faire capitalism.
As a business owner I was also required to pay for unemployment insurance, including on myself, but was not eligible to actually make a claim and collect as an officer of the company. There’s no way I would ever consider starting a business again in the US.
Once you realize that the police only arrive after a crime has been committed, you start to understand the saying, "You are on your own. Nobody is coming to help you."
As I like to quote "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away".
The ineffectiveness of police protection was brought home to me in a very blatant way one day when someone who was robbing cars in the neighborhood stole some tools out of my car. The police wouldn't even take fingerprints - said that there was nothing they would do - NOTHING THEY WOULD DO. Almost exactly one week later, an older lady down the street had some money stolen from her car. SHE was related to someone in the police department - they had the criminal arrested within 24 hours. Months later, when this guy was back on the street, one of my neighbors caught him stealing out of his car. Mindful of what had happened before, he knocked the guy down and sat on him until the police came and took him away. Luckily, my neighbor wasn't charged - VT isn't THAT leftist yet.
People need to realize that the function of the police is to solve crimes, not prevent them. The only form of prevention is successful crime solving, and the subsequent removal of a criminal from society; assuming the courts do their job and remove the convicted.
Actually, the supreme court ruled some time ago that the police were agents of the state, not the people. They "solve crimes" at their discretion. Their main function is to issue tickets for revenue collection and protect state assets.
We have let it go because we don't have the tools or power to fight it. Let's be honest about this, especially the power part. We have no ability to enforce anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't tell me about the 2nd Amendment and all the guns you have. Having guns did not stop farmers from being foreclosed upon and evicted during the Great Depression. At best it might have bought them a little time but it did not change anything in the end.
I would suggest, if you are not familiar with it, learning about what happened to the Cherokee Nation in north Georgia and east Tennessee. In the 1830's the Cherokees were a prosperous, settled nation of farmers and businessmen; they controlled many of the ferry routes across the rivers; they had their own seat of government at New Echota, Georgia; they had their own written language; in short, they lived lives that were not too different from the white settlers that were pouring into the region. Then gold was discovered in north Georgia, and that sealed the fate of the Cherokees. Pressure was put upon them to sell their land; the tribe held a vote on it. Most of the people who opposed selling and moving to Oklahoma stayed away from the polls, believing that their absence counted as a no vote. Well, it might have in Cherokee culture but by that time New Echota was no longer really calling the shots. Both the state of Georgia and the federal government interpreted the results as a Yes, we will sell our land and move vote, and they acted accordingly. The Cherokees then went to the US Supreme Court which ruled in their favor. President Andrew Jackson, no friend of the Cherokees, reportedly said that the court had made their decision, now let them enforce it. Which the Supreme Court decidedly did not. The Cherokees were then told they had two years to pack up and move. They did not. Two years later United States troops came to every household in the Cherokee Nation and told the inhabitants they had ONE HOUR to get their things together. Thus began the Trail of Tears.
I mention the Cherokee because unlike other tribes, they did not go to war to save their lands. They tried to use the system. In the end, as we all know, it didn't matter what they did. The tribes that fought back also lost. Outside of the reservation system, Native Americans really don't have much power and even inside the reservations they don't have much either. Oh, they can protest against pipelines and mining and other things, but if those in power decide that they want those things, the pipeline will be built, the mine will be built, and the wishes of the people who live there be damned. So please don't talk to me about resistance; it's been tried before. And it failed. The people who resisted are not the ones running things. They are not in Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court. Instead, many are poor, broken, with very little hope that things will get better.
I appreciate your comment but the historical facts are we Can change the system. In point of fact.. Gandhi led India out of bondage without firing a single shot from what was at the time the largest Empire on Earth, ' the Sun never set on The English Empire..' our crisis is on a similar scale with Big Brother so if Gandhi can do it we can too.. if we focus now and elect leaders like RFK Jr who are truly up for the task.. get involved today in concrete actions to Change this Nation.. the Opportunity is ours to be Seized
There is a possibly apocryphal story about that. The story is that when Neville Chamberlin met with Hitler to hammer out his "peace for our time" Munich agreement they chatted about Ghandi. Hitler says, "This Ghandi fellow who is causing so much trouble, why don't you just kill him?"
The point is, non-violent resistance against government works only when your side controls the flow of propaganda to the populace AND your opponents are not criminal sociopaths.
Or ask the J6 political prisoners how non-violent resistance worked out for them.
They were set up. And their "spidy sense" should have warned them that this didn't feel right!
Not saying that their treatment by government is ok, it is ABSOLUTELY not, and a total violation of their Constitutional & God Given rights.
(Thank the "Patriot Act" for stripping us of them completely, and every administration since has been grabbing more power with the UN International Health Regulations threatening to move our lords and masters back to Europe.) I digress.
But Alex Jones "smelled a rat" and left. So did others.
The evidence that the Feds set these guys up is surfacing I believe. They should not have fallen for it. And because they did a large portion of this nation believes Donald Trump is a wanna be Dictator.
Sigh.
The Chaos Agents are playing on human gullibility. We need to smarten up before the run "Project Bluebeam!"
Exactly. Or ask the Tibetans how it worked out for them as well. I have studied a little bit of that era in Indian history and I don't think it was as simple as the popular mythology puts it. I suspect that Britain would have eventually let India go, Gandhi or no Gandhi, as they had too many problems at home to deal with.
The American Revolution is another event that is often cited as the little guy overcoming the big guy. Ok, here are the facts. I am a descendant of Loyalists (British supporters) who were forced to flee the country afterwards. The Loyalists were FAR from being in the minority. Remember the "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" of a couple of years ago? Well, if you were a Loyalist you could expect one of those mostly peaceful protestors to show up at your door with burning torches and hot tar and feathers. Yeah. They don't talk about that much in the history books, do they? And they downplay the fact that if the French hadn't come to the Americans' aid when they did, things might have turned out very differently. Not to mention that not everyone in Britain supported the war. You could say that the American colonies were a liability as far as the Crown was concerned; Britain had spent a lot of money defending them in the French and Indian War and felt that the colonists were not doing their fair share of shouldering the expenses. (Where have we heard that before?). Which is why all the taxes in the first place. Canada--which presumably "suffered" the same injustices laid out in the Declaration of Independence--never went to war against the mother country and eventually became independent through peaceful means.
They fought a valiant fight, but it’s the tiny fraction of them that survived. I would like to see the tiny fraction be the government and the greater numbers be those that became wealthy throwing off their yoke.
Try living in Canuckistan! Not only do we not have free speech, but we scoff at the relatively tiny deductions your government takes from your paycheques. We scoff at your piddling property taxes! And, as if that's not bad enough, we pay 15% sales tax on almost every good and service we buy with the paltry amount we have left! We do, however, gain the privilege of slowly dying on surgical waiting lists while feeling morally superior to Americans because our health care is "free."
it was once one of the great countries of the world - what are you doing to take it back from the evil f***s who have taken it over????? - and the pathetic passive citizenry which has allowed this??? - Democracy Study Guide – https://www.rudemacedon.ca/DSG/0000-summary.html
Glad you asked. Between me and the other half of the pairodocs, we have lost one job, had our medical licenses constantly threatened, started a medical freedom movement and world class conference (which last year featured Jay Battacharya and this year features Gad Saad, Rupa Subramanya, Aaron Kheriaty, Amy Hamm and others), risked having our bank accounts frozen by contributing to the trucker convoy, made significant financial donations to various other freedom promoting groups and activities, appeared on several podcasts (including RFK Junior's podcast) and voted against the Liberal party when we had the chance. Oh, and we write a Substack (Pairodocs Collection of Heresy) which has thousands of free subscribers (we are about to open up a paid option.) Our conference is Oct 27-29th if you'd like to attend: freespeechinmedicine.com. Cheers.
This scam is totally normalized for most. However, for the many who have long seen the absurdity and injustice of this whole system, over which we have, practically speaking, no influence, there are two choices: make yourself crazy trying to fight it, and lose all the things that you are scared they’ll take, or treat it like weather systems and the capricious gods of old.
I’ve known this was evil since I was a kid. I’m only now realizing that, since the 70s, it’s been *purely* for domination and mind-control, because they will just print what they want until the bottom falls out and plan to be in Switzerland by then, but life is a beautiful tragedy and a farce.
So I foster kittens. I’ve got six right here at the moment.
Yes, I have often looked at my paystub and lamented that I could have had the house paid off, a new car, some decent investments, maybe even some investment properties ... but no. Big Brother knows oh-so-much-better what to do with my money then I do. After all, paying off their blackmailers, making sure crony billionaires don't lose their investments and keeping the NWO awash in cash is so much more important than anything I might do with it, right? >:-{
Whether you call them overlords, representatives, bureaucrats, etc, lack of any sort of governing authority is the antithesis of a "society". Outside of living as a hermit, established rules of conduct are required to ensure functional relationships. The only questions are: What rules? How are they enforced?
Definitional pedantry aside, name 1 relationship that couldn't be severed due to horrendous behavior by 1 party or the other.
True. Defense, police and courts all are necessary societal functions. The question is, can these be done better in the open market? Its arguable that rich folks and other elites already don't believe government can handle these functions (ie. they hire private security forces and top legal support to supersede incompetent government services). It does take some shedding of preconceived notions to discover how private entities can better perform most if not all services. Remember, in Soviet Russia, people didn't know who would make cars if the government auto industry shut down!
CPA once told me they instituted withholding taxes in the 1940s because they knew there’d be a revolution if everyone was required to send in their taxes at the end of the year. Less painful to siphon it off drop by drop. The quickest way to become a fiscal conservative (at least for me) was having to pay quarterly taxes. A very different experience to put the money in your account and then have to write a check to the government. Especially realizing the money was wasted before the ink was dry.
I have said this for years. If people had to actually sit and write a check to the government every month, there would have been a revolution in the last century. And then...they go about wringing their hands in excitement to get the money back that was theirs in the first place. And, it will usually be squandered on a large purchase or vacay, because all of a sudden, windfall! It was yours in the first place dummies!! Or, if you were like us...you might get a little back from the Feds, but then it goes to pay for the privilege of living in your state...gotta love writing a check to the state of Idaho for 8K every spring. People are so ignorant of their own lives and they way they work. Slaves.
So true about the pain of those estimated quarterly payments! Even if I trusted where it was going, the rates are too high. How have we let this go on our watch?
You know what’s worse than tax withholding? Foreign dividend tax withholding, where the government withholds taxes on dividends to foreign residents. The corporation has already paid corporate tax on the money. The leftover profit is distributed as a divided to owners and the government withholds taxes on dividends paid to a foreign resident the government has never and will never provide any government services to.
The best government is just like the best (accurate!) medicine: minimum effective dose.
Government can be fatal in even homeopathic doses
Agreed! Especially on the federal level.
That's why 80% of it needs to be local, 15% state and only 5% federal :)
Correct!
The state is not medicine, it’s poison.
Since the Trump/Biden "Pandemic Response," that is definitely a proven fact.
; ))
And so is most medicine!
Sola dosis facit venenum
Nice! But in the case of Govt, we need to clearly (re)define what actually constitutes an "effective dose" at a societal level. Too much time has passed from the creation of the original documentation and many things exist now that did not exist then. I think it's time for an update on both the user manual and the developer's API documentation :)
Think of trying to operate a current piece of software using the (printed and never updated) instruction manual from 1992 (let alone 1776). That would not go very smoothly. Since Govt functions sort of like civilization's operating system, then most people would agree that means to keep a "relatively smoothly running civilization" it is very important to keep not just the documentation up - the OS software itself needs to be up to date on patches and documentation. And only occasionally add new features - but only after extensive functional, regression and user acceptance testing...
Congress currently patches the things incessantly (new legislation) but in a seemingly random manner. I have yet to see anything resembling a comprehensive project development plan for how "enhancements" and bug fixes are elicited consistently from the customer/citizen base (oh wait, we're not the "real" customers anymore are we, even though we're paying for it), evaluated for both feasibility and affordability, or prioritized. There also does not seem to be any opportunity for code review - they promote freaking alpha code to production overnight without 98% of the "dev team" even getting a chance to read it once! And there's certainly little to no functional, regression or user acceptance testing before changes are rolled out to production. Hell, they don't even smoke test half the time :)
Without clearly defined criteria between what is required functionality vs what is excessive (unsolicited scope creep features) or defective (bugs) functionality, they keep on taking another foot (or 5280) every time you close your eyes to catch a nap (who even gets a full night's sleep anymore). OK, enough half-wired programmer analogies - maybe it's time to pull the plug for just a few minutes, roll back to a much earlier and less bug-riddled OS version release and reboot the damn system - while we figure out whether it's a massive code review/purge of buggy functions, or a full re-write that is needed....
Throw out every law that was passed after the constitution was ratified and you won’t need to rewrite the constitution.
All laws should end after 10 years. Keep the pols busy passing old "good" laws instead of thinking up new bad ones.
Thomas Jefferson proposed this. He said that rather than all Americans being bound by laws passed by previous generations, all laws should sunset after a fixed period of time. Necessary laws would be passed again. Most laws would be repealed automatically as the clock ran out on them.
If that sunsetting of laws had become the rule, Americans would probably be free today.
and just honor the Constitution. Current “leaders” don’t do this at all.
Maybe the Flag Act of 1818 could remain!
Government is not the operating system of civilization, the free market is. Government is just supposed to be the spam blocker or malware protection. Nothing more.
Excellent!
I'm not either - but programming, at it's core, is about workflow and process, and how you deal with exceptions and edge cases. Maintaining a working civilization requires some kind of ongoing workflow and process. It doesn't HAVE to be computerized, but in this day and time much of it already is, so unless or until the power goes out for good :), then that's what we're working with ....
I agree with the premise of your post: humans are humans, not machines, not some alchemical creation, and not computers. We are a specific and unique type of creature. In that vein, I’ve gravitated towards two conceptual ideas that seem to “fit” us: Robin Dunbar’s “number,” and Rene Girard’s take on mimetics, mimetic crisis, and scapegoating. At base we are tribal organisms, and it’s best to try to clean up the systems we create north and south of 150-500 grouped individuals.
Love this
Yes!
https://patrick.net/post/1379804/2023-07-18-government-should-always-be-minimized
I recall reading somewhere about the size of the underground economy being directly proportional to the tax rate. I see a return to barter in a completely disintermediated economy on the horizon.
It’s probably a good idea to have a cache of stuff you can trade in various amounts. “Durable consumables” come to mind.
Mother-in-law said this was popular in the 70s (and we’re reliving the economy of the 70s, and it’s about to go back to 1929, but I digress), anyway, she said that IRS agents would show up at swap meets and gather information about the people there. I believe there are multiple tax court cases on the matter from then. “All income from whatever source derived.” They mean it. Unless your name starts with an H and ends with an R, you are expected to report all income like a good little serf.
All true. Again, I'm not advocating breaking laws. But there are limits to what the govenrment can detect and collect. Hypothetically, neighbors who informally barter labor (e.g. baby sitting for yard work) might be an example. Of course, modern economies cannot run with barter. On the other hand, there's a certain elegance in the near-impossibility of the IRS collecting tax or placing a lien on "I promised to mow Bob's lawn next month."
"Modern economy"..."barter"...see Venezuela.
You can gift favors can’t you?
promissory notes or any paper contract needs to not be online
They will certainly do their best to extort all they can. But then the government has to start being the arbiter of the value of everything. If I give you a piglet in exchange for a hen, what’s the tax? We could both claim the net income was zero since we obviously assigned equal value to piglet and the hen. If the dentist cleans the barber’s teeth in exchange for a haircut, who would know? This goes on all the time, as well it should. The more intrusive the tax man, the more devious people are in avoiding him.
The courts ate now decoding how much your house is worth..the trump case.
Well, if Mara lago is worth 18 million when an empty 2 acre lot next door is worth 200 million, my home is worth about $250 dollars. I guess they will need to adjust my property taxes accordingly.
Do you think Trump is working on that?
I am not holding my breath waiting for ANY changes. At present our government is FUBAR
Perhaps the bank should be prosecuted for also over valuing the property and then standing to make financial gains by charging interest on an overly large loan amount ?
In which case Trump is the victim . . .
and the only victim because everything was paid back
That’s the scary bit. The thin edge of the centrally-planned economy wedge.
The figure for Trump's hotel the judge assigned is embarrassingly clearly low
Amend the Constitution to outlaw income tax.
This is one of the many reasons that I think Wilson was the worst president of the United States. A couple of presidents did a lot of damage because they were stupid (Biden and Buchanan). Nothing can compare to the long term damage incurred from this motherfucker's actions. Income tax, Federal reserve system, league of nations (UN), senators chosen by popular vote, US involvement in WW1 (this led to Hitler and the BIS) and don't forget he was a eugenist. So if you wanted to stick a pin in the timeline to indicate when it turned to shit, here it is.
Exactly. Although some stretch it back to the earlier genesis of the Progressive movement, I stick with the asshole known as Woodrow Wilson. Don't forget the forced draft in his list of 'accomplishments'.
This is the best idea ever in the entire Substack universe.
The income tax is not only a Constitutional tax, it is also a very desirable tax. Applied in strict adherence to its statutory design, the income tax is benignly-limited in scope. It is also a fit mechanism by which those who make money from the exploitation of public resources return to the common purse a portion of their private profits.
https://dawnfrench.substack.com/p/the-fascinating-truth-about-the-16th
The problem is, you are probably being fooled into believing that the income tax applies to you, which for most Americans, it doesn't. However, like "safe and effective" if we're told a big enough lie often enough, we rarely question it. And the lie you've been propagandized to believe is that the income tax applies to you when it does not.
I don't think it really allowed for it to begin with. Wasn't it Wilson who introduced it?
In "The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Michael Grant, he uses that same example (a private livestock exchange between two farmers, over their shared back fence to assure secrecy) to demonstrate how Rome in its terminal imperial stage had indeed made itself the arbiter of value of all things created, traded, bought or sold by its citizens. As Grant tells it, the farmers were obligated to locate a Roman tax collector, report the exchange and pay the requisite tax. The penalty for not reporting the transaction was death.
The difference between the collapsing Roman Empire and our devolving American one is that we already have the automated and regulatory infrastructure in place to surveil every human interaction (because: to keep us safe!), to account for every calf, lambkin, and kid (because: to determine the CO2 each creates!) and to make legible every barter transaction (because: tax reporting already applies to barter https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420).
What's missing is the death penalty piece, but with IRS SWAT teams having become a thing for what in essence is a mere administrative crime enforced by CPA's, I'm pretty sure that at the critical psychological juncture we'll all be treated to wave-after-lurid-wave of body-cam footage of accidental murders of citizens, their children and their dog (Real? Staged? DeepFake? Who knows?) in raids-gone-bad over a $12 barter transaction, until the citizenry gets the message and feels the threat. Then, when the IRS auditor is sitting in one's living room perusing his thick file in tense silence, how long will it be before a citizen wonders aloud: "Can a fellow retroactively file a 1099 on a barter he might hypothetically have forgotten to include under gross income?"
It won't be you and me, Lon. We're rocks. It'll be the other guy (our stinking, weaselly weasel of a counterparty) that turns us in. But we're caught, none-the-less. And then it's our turn to make the same deal: "This all goes away if I get ten Barter 1099's, with names I don't already have." Pretty soon the whole country will be rolled up tight by less than ten percent of its population. (The weaselly ten percent.)
Also: Dentists, barbers? Really? The Iron Rule is never barter with anyone whose rice bowl requires a license from the state. That button always gets pushed first! Right away; no exceptions. People who have lived their whole professional lives inside the velvet rope of a licensed cartel will do whatever they need to do -- without batting an eye or shedding a tear. I think we all know that by now.
You make interesting points.
The income tax is not only a Constitutional tax, it is also a very desirable tax. Applied in strict adherence to its statutory design, the income tax is benignly-limited in scope. It is also a fit mechanism by which those who make money from the exploitation of public resources return to the common purse a portion of their private profits.
https://dawnfrench.substack.com/p/the-fascinating-truth-about-the-16th
The problem is, you are probably being fooled into believing that the income tax applies to you, which for most Americans, it doesn't. However, like "safe and effective" if we're told a big enough lie often enough, we rarely question it. And the lie you've been propagandized to believe is that the income tax applies to you when it does not.
Hello Dawn (or as we say here in America, Good Morning),
Just last evening I was reading "Tragedy & Hope 101" by Joe Plummer, who makes an interesting observation about the income tax that dovetails neatly with your posts on this thread. Plummer, leaning heavily on Quigley of course while also critiquing and correcting him, builds the case that before earning the Democrat nomination for president, Wilson secretly agreed to a raft of stipulations put to him by the men behind the curtain, Carroll Quigley's Network, who were making his grandiose ambitions come true. Plummer asserts, and it's hard to deny now looking back, that Col. E.M. House was Wilson's surreptitious handler on behalf of the Network, as well as its political point man charged with making the stipulations happen by any means necessary. Both the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax Amendment were on the list of stipulations agreed to well ahead of Wilson's being sworn in. It appears Wilson was simply not interested in looking into either initiative before getting behind them, taking credit for their supposed benefits for the common man, and getting them into law. House took care of the details. We now know that the Federal Reserve system was a Trojan Horse for those that we in this generation call the Banksters; it was a soup-to-nuts fraud and psy-op. Your assertion that the Income Tax is cut from the same cloth as The Fed is congruent with Plummer's and Quigley's observations about it, as well as those made by many others. It must be said that I've heard them before but that my research ended when I was assured by a tax partner at a white shoes Manhattan firm that he had looked into it all himself. It was all bullshit, he told me years ago.
Funny how much more we know now about both The System and the personal weaknesses of our friends and neighbors who serve and profit by it. Upton Sinclair was right.
Applying the Iron Rule of Barter, above, that those with state licenses, like a law license, will do or say whatever they need to to remain members in good standing of their cartel, in his case the NY State Bar, I've decided to delve more deeply into your work. Subscribed.
“All income from whatever source derived.”
Yes, but what they don’t want you to know is that “income” has a very specific definition that is NOT “all that comes in,” though they benefit immensely because through over a century of propaganda they have made you believe that.
It’s a fraud of epic proportions:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dawnfrench/p/the-fascinating-truth-about-the-16th?r=gse79&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I enjoy your enthusiasm, but the courts have upheld the “all income” doctrine, and will throw out as “frivolous” any case trying what you’re proposing.
No sir, you are misinformed by over a century of propaganda about what the law says and the courts have said.
"The Income Tax IS Only Written And Administered As An Excise On Privilege"
"...the tax law, as written, confines itself carefully and scrupulously to nothing but gains resulting from the exercise of federal privilege, just as any federal excise tax must do.
It is not by accident or oversight that, for instance, the "wages" subject to the tax, or the phrase "trade or business" as used in the context of the tax, are custom-defined in the law."
Good luck with that. I’m a licensed CPA, I deal with tax law every day. My life is very boring most of the time. You can go before a judge and argue what you’ve written there, and if large enough amounts of money are involved, you will go straight to jail, do not pass Go! and do not collect $200. I’m in the middle of a deadline and multiple clients’ tax messes, but perhaps after the deadline I’ll write a post citing the plethora of “frivolous” court cases. If I want to spend my free time playing in Checkpoint Riag. Hmm, maybe not. Anyway, yes, good luck to you!
Must be a busy time. We have to pay a big tax bill within the next couple of weeks. Our little music business has had a lot of gigs and no one takes out our taxes. But they do come for it
Yes, and as a "licensed CPA" I doubt you've ever actually read the tax code. I know because I fired mine because he hadn't read it either. After he couldn't (or refused to) answer my questions about the definitions of "trade or business," "wages," "employee," etc.
Using prepared software or relying on "opinions" of others who benefit from the fraud is not the same thing as reading the code and knowing for yourself what it does and does not say. As an Enrolled Actuary I was very familiar with Title 26 and actually bothered to read it.
But please, if you have free time to play along, I don't mind reviewing your work. But don't be surprised to find that you have been lied to, and have been lying to others, for your entire career. Of course, that begs the question - you are relying on your career to pay your own bills so playing along with the fraud is profitable for you. Can you say, "conflict of interest?"
Toilet paper will be VERY valuable
Or maybe house-plants with large leaves. More sustainable.
I’m going for whiskey and reading glasses
12GA, .223 and .308 seem like they might be handy because they can be traded in small quantities.
I think it was James Wesley, Rawles who said, "In the future, a 12-gauge shell will be a $10 bill, a .223 cartridge a $5, and .22LR's singles," or words to that effect.
Yes absolutely. I use the metaphor of Beans Bullets and Bullion for basic trading. (as well as smoke, booze and pot. Vices make for great trading.)
A decent HAM radio costs about $25. If you stock up on petroleum jelly and use the radio for early warning you can lube up to prepare for what's coming.
Also very important to become skilled! And keep up/expand those skills we each have.
socialism always grows a big black market
Durable consumables… Examples?
.223, .308, 12GA. They keep for years, but are consumable.
Beans and buckshot… 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
I m an MD in private practice. I own a practice, small business that employs about 40 people and has revenues in the multiple millions.
All in: the gov at various levels, state, local, federal. claims, confiscates / collects between 65-75 percent of all the money this business makes.
It is a privately held business and all the "profits " are passed through to the partners. My personal income tax rates is 45-50 percent and when you add in sales taxes, fees, on everythying I buy like gas, consumer products etc, ( I have tracked all this) , I pay 60-70 percent of my income in taxes.
My business is subject to payroll tax, numerous fees and taxes on utilities..
And then of course there is the dead weight loss of the MASSIVE stifling cost of compliance with all manner of burdensome regulatory schemes... paperwork, billing... for which I have to have additional staff, computer infrastructure. and more.
eventually all of this is going to come crashing down around us. We are already seeing it as interest rates rise and every single bank in the country is underwater.
Rome died of red tape,
Overspending, (by the war machine,)
Moral depravity.
Sound familiar?
its sad, its heartbreaking. Cause Im 55 and grew up in northern NJ in the 1970s... It seemed like things were heading in the right direction in the 1980s and part of the 90s. People say things are cyclical, that things will improve. the problem is really the level of federal debt. We cant unwing the debt and "red tape" without some massive re adjustments and pain. The convulsions and displacements that will result from this could be relatively peaceful and brief if we let free markets and reason hold sway, but I dont trust gov around the world to do the right thing. We might be facing hyperinflation , civil unrest, civil and or world war again.
Helps to be ready... ammo, food, fuel, hope for the best expect the worst
I am so sorry you're having to deal with all of that. It's the same in our business, which is also highly regulated. The "powers that be" are pushing independents into joining bigger and bigger corporations, and then the boards of these corporations act like government entities. Please hang in there--we so desperately NEED independent doctors to help pull us through this wall of fire. I'm hoping there's greater freedom on the other side of it, as many people are waking up and speaking out.
the consolidation is a very disturbing trend. its not being driven by market forces. T he gov and bureacracy have imposed perverse incentives on so many industries that destroy competiution and drive up costs . When there are only a few large companies in any sphere the gov regulates them and we have a crony capitalist / corporatist/ fascist state in place.
Yep. It's like government is the worthless silent partner who doesn't do anything but take the profit.
not "like" IS. Its an extortionary parasitical relationship.... no difference morally from gangsters or the mob... except the "state" has somehow convinced millions of dupes of its moral legitimacy and inevitability.
gov says to me " thats a really nice medical practice you have here , it would be shame if something would happen to it.... you pay us 60 percent of collections and we will make sure nothing happens to it. "
if you object to this "arrangement" they lock you in a cage.
Exactly why Atlas shrugged.
A big factor in why droves of doctors are retiring early?
yes thats right. and many newer younger docs are indoctrinated drones
Thanks for that series of posts, Man-i. I was in practice up until 2000 and was fighting all the things you mentioned, but could see that the dark forces were steering us directly towards the present circumstances you describe.
Thanks for reading and responding. I never took any of those shots and I was persecuted by the other docs around me. I was kicked off the staff of the Valley Hosp in Ridgewood New Jersey. Although they never reported me to the National Practicioner Data Bank because on some level, they know that they’re wrong they’re just too cowardly to admit it.
I had other doctors threaten to stop referring patients to me
I had one colleague call me reckless and irresponsible. Another one called me selfish.
I actually offered to volunteer at this hospital early on in the pandemic, because I knew that I was not at personal risk of death from Covid. I even offered to give my two vaccine doses at the hospital acquired for us to an older, semi retired partner, and they refused.
I have one other female colleague, actually question my “ manhood”
Most of the doctors in this northern New Jersey area behaved like hysterical, cowardly idiots and were wrong about everything
I’ve seen the same behavior with former colleagues I’m still in touch with. There is a “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” effect in play, but the outlook of private practice doctors vs. employees is substantially different. But even so, most doctors are among the most brainwashed, perhaps because of the fear factor. They were drilled over and over again how at risk they were for horrible death, to be brought to them by their patients. Now that they and their colleagues and friends are suffering vaxx injuries, perhaps they are beginning to open one eye and question?
What's your best guess at the % of indoctrinated drones graduating?
And so many people look at docs as “rich” but have no idea about this reality.
Doctors are suckers
We work in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, and all of our income, or almost all of our income, is salary, so we’re subjected to burdensome confiscatory taxation
Most doctors now majority of them work for large medical systems. They are not independent anymore. Most of them are salaried employees, and they will just go along with whatever the large corporate or government controlled medical organization does.
Too sad
I’m so sorry… I wish there were something we ALL could do! bartering??? A doctors visit for something else maybe?
As a lifelong and now retired employer I must add that the “matching portion” of social security and medicare payments employers are obliged to pay is also not seen by employees and a huge impediment to profitability, not to mention all the other employee costs.
And so there's little-to-no appreciation of the business owner, by the employee--except under the rare circumstance where individual employees have somehow gained knowledge of these onerous, confiscatory employer/business owner requirements AND have not been philosophically corrupted against the morality of laissez-faire capitalism.
I know of people who have worked for themselves but who are now happy productive employees instead. The difference in paperwork is night and day.
Yup
Bingo
As a business owner I was also required to pay for unemployment insurance, including on myself, but was not eligible to actually make a claim and collect as an officer of the company. There’s no way I would ever consider starting a business again in the US.
Voting.
"Common sense gun control".
... because law-abiding citizens should not have the means to defend themselves, especially when the cops are being defunded ...
Feeling more and more every day like a fleeced sheep.
Once you realize that the police only arrive after a crime has been committed, you start to understand the saying, "You are on your own. Nobody is coming to help you."
As I like to quote "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away".
The ineffectiveness of police protection was brought home to me in a very blatant way one day when someone who was robbing cars in the neighborhood stole some tools out of my car. The police wouldn't even take fingerprints - said that there was nothing they would do - NOTHING THEY WOULD DO. Almost exactly one week later, an older lady down the street had some money stolen from her car. SHE was related to someone in the police department - they had the criminal arrested within 24 hours. Months later, when this guy was back on the street, one of my neighbors caught him stealing out of his car. Mindful of what had happened before, he knocked the guy down and sat on him until the police came and took him away. Luckily, my neighbor wasn't charged - VT isn't THAT leftist yet.
People need to realize that the function of the police is to solve crimes, not prevent them. The only form of prevention is successful crime solving, and the subsequent removal of a criminal from society; assuming the courts do their job and remove the convicted.
Actually, the supreme court ruled some time ago that the police were agents of the state, not the people. They "solve crimes" at their discretion. Their main function is to issue tickets for revenue collection and protect state assets.
That's all related to "defund the police"
Actually, this was way before the "Defund the Police" movement.
Even if the police are watching you get assaulted, they have no duty to interfere and protect you. Remember that.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/police-arent-there-to-protect-you
Yep! Exactly.
"Academic Freedom"
We have let it go because we don't have the tools or power to fight it. Let's be honest about this, especially the power part. We have no ability to enforce anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't tell me about the 2nd Amendment and all the guns you have. Having guns did not stop farmers from being foreclosed upon and evicted during the Great Depression. At best it might have bought them a little time but it did not change anything in the end.
I would suggest, if you are not familiar with it, learning about what happened to the Cherokee Nation in north Georgia and east Tennessee. In the 1830's the Cherokees were a prosperous, settled nation of farmers and businessmen; they controlled many of the ferry routes across the rivers; they had their own seat of government at New Echota, Georgia; they had their own written language; in short, they lived lives that were not too different from the white settlers that were pouring into the region. Then gold was discovered in north Georgia, and that sealed the fate of the Cherokees. Pressure was put upon them to sell their land; the tribe held a vote on it. Most of the people who opposed selling and moving to Oklahoma stayed away from the polls, believing that their absence counted as a no vote. Well, it might have in Cherokee culture but by that time New Echota was no longer really calling the shots. Both the state of Georgia and the federal government interpreted the results as a Yes, we will sell our land and move vote, and they acted accordingly. The Cherokees then went to the US Supreme Court which ruled in their favor. President Andrew Jackson, no friend of the Cherokees, reportedly said that the court had made their decision, now let them enforce it. Which the Supreme Court decidedly did not. The Cherokees were then told they had two years to pack up and move. They did not. Two years later United States troops came to every household in the Cherokee Nation and told the inhabitants they had ONE HOUR to get their things together. Thus began the Trail of Tears.
I mention the Cherokee because unlike other tribes, they did not go to war to save their lands. They tried to use the system. In the end, as we all know, it didn't matter what they did. The tribes that fought back also lost. Outside of the reservation system, Native Americans really don't have much power and even inside the reservations they don't have much either. Oh, they can protest against pipelines and mining and other things, but if those in power decide that they want those things, the pipeline will be built, the mine will be built, and the wishes of the people who live there be damned. So please don't talk to me about resistance; it's been tried before. And it failed. The people who resisted are not the ones running things. They are not in Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court. Instead, many are poor, broken, with very little hope that things will get better.
If only 10% of people refuse to comply it would completely overwhelm the system, enforcement would collapse, and the remaining 90% would follow.
I appreciate your comment but the historical facts are we Can change the system. In point of fact.. Gandhi led India out of bondage without firing a single shot from what was at the time the largest Empire on Earth, ' the Sun never set on The English Empire..' our crisis is on a similar scale with Big Brother so if Gandhi can do it we can too.. if we focus now and elect leaders like RFK Jr who are truly up for the task.. get involved today in concrete actions to Change this Nation.. the Opportunity is ours to be Seized
There is a possibly apocryphal story about that. The story is that when Neville Chamberlin met with Hitler to hammer out his "peace for our time" Munich agreement they chatted about Ghandi. Hitler says, "This Ghandi fellow who is causing so much trouble, why don't you just kill him?"
The point is, non-violent resistance against government works only when your side controls the flow of propaganda to the populace AND your opponents are not criminal sociopaths.
Or ask the J6 political prisoners how non-violent resistance worked out for them.
They were set up. And their "spidy sense" should have warned them that this didn't feel right!
Not saying that their treatment by government is ok, it is ABSOLUTELY not, and a total violation of their Constitutional & God Given rights.
(Thank the "Patriot Act" for stripping us of them completely, and every administration since has been grabbing more power with the UN International Health Regulations threatening to move our lords and masters back to Europe.) I digress.
But Alex Jones "smelled a rat" and left. So did others.
The evidence that the Feds set these guys up is surfacing I believe. They should not have fallen for it. And because they did a large portion of this nation believes Donald Trump is a wanna be Dictator.
Sigh.
The Chaos Agents are playing on human gullibility. We need to smarten up before the run "Project Bluebeam!"
Exactly. Or ask the Tibetans how it worked out for them as well. I have studied a little bit of that era in Indian history and I don't think it was as simple as the popular mythology puts it. I suspect that Britain would have eventually let India go, Gandhi or no Gandhi, as they had too many problems at home to deal with.
The American Revolution is another event that is often cited as the little guy overcoming the big guy. Ok, here are the facts. I am a descendant of Loyalists (British supporters) who were forced to flee the country afterwards. The Loyalists were FAR from being in the minority. Remember the "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" of a couple of years ago? Well, if you were a Loyalist you could expect one of those mostly peaceful protestors to show up at your door with burning torches and hot tar and feathers. Yeah. They don't talk about that much in the history books, do they? And they downplay the fact that if the French hadn't come to the Americans' aid when they did, things might have turned out very differently. Not to mention that not everyone in Britain supported the war. You could say that the American colonies were a liability as far as the Crown was concerned; Britain had spent a lot of money defending them in the French and Indian War and felt that the colonists were not doing their fair share of shouldering the expenses. (Where have we heard that before?). Which is why all the taxes in the first place. Canada--which presumably "suffered" the same injustices laid out in the Declaration of Independence--never went to war against the mother country and eventually became independent through peaceful means.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida never capitulated to US dot gov and they are bajillionaires today.
Adding insult to dot gov, I prepped by buying tax-free Marlboros from their store for future bartering (I don't smoke).
They fought a valiant fight, but it’s the tiny fraction of them that survived. I would like to see the tiny fraction be the government and the greater numbers be those that became wealthy throwing off their yoke.
What a grim tale.
Try living in Canuckistan! Not only do we not have free speech, but we scoff at the relatively tiny deductions your government takes from your paycheques. We scoff at your piddling property taxes! And, as if that's not bad enough, we pay 15% sales tax on almost every good and service we buy with the paltry amount we have left! We do, however, gain the privilege of slowly dying on surgical waiting lists while feeling morally superior to Americans because our health care is "free."
What has happened to Canada stuns me.
It does CLEARLY explain the benefits of the American Revolution and our subsequent separation from the "British Crown."
Ditto the SHOCKING behavior in Australia and New Zealand!
Sociopaths run that Empire still, it is obvious!
it was once one of the great countries of the world - what are you doing to take it back from the evil f***s who have taken it over????? - and the pathetic passive citizenry which has allowed this??? - Democracy Study Guide – https://www.rudemacedon.ca/DSG/0000-summary.html
Glad you asked. Between me and the other half of the pairodocs, we have lost one job, had our medical licenses constantly threatened, started a medical freedom movement and world class conference (which last year featured Jay Battacharya and this year features Gad Saad, Rupa Subramanya, Aaron Kheriaty, Amy Hamm and others), risked having our bank accounts frozen by contributing to the trucker convoy, made significant financial donations to various other freedom promoting groups and activities, appeared on several podcasts (including RFK Junior's podcast) and voted against the Liberal party when we had the chance. Oh, and we write a Substack (Pairodocs Collection of Heresy) which has thousands of free subscribers (we are about to open up a paid option.) Our conference is Oct 27-29th if you'd like to attend: freespeechinmedicine.com. Cheers.
I was born there, but my dad emigrated us when I was three. Thanks dad!!!
Yes, my parents ALMOST emigrated to Bermuda before I was born. Too bad they didn't. But then, I probably wouldn't have been born. Forget that.
This scam is totally normalized for most. However, for the many who have long seen the absurdity and injustice of this whole system, over which we have, practically speaking, no influence, there are two choices: make yourself crazy trying to fight it, and lose all the things that you are scared they’ll take, or treat it like weather systems and the capricious gods of old.
I’ve known this was evil since I was a kid. I’m only now realizing that, since the 70s, it’s been *purely* for domination and mind-control, because they will just print what they want until the bottom falls out and plan to be in Switzerland by then, but life is a beautiful tragedy and a farce.
So I foster kittens. I’ve got six right here at the moment.
THE PUBLIC DEMANDS PICS OF KITTENS!!
Can I upload pictures to the comments? Oh! I can put them on my substack! I’ll get some snaps.
YAY!
Check your inbox:)
Yes, I have often looked at my paystub and lamented that I could have had the house paid off, a new car, some decent investments, maybe even some investment properties ... but no. Big Brother knows oh-so-much-better what to do with my money then I do. After all, paying off their blackmailers, making sure crony billionaires don't lose their investments and keeping the NWO awash in cash is so much more important than anything I might do with it, right? >:-{
I'll skip the specific answer and go straight to a generalization: 90%+ of everything enforced by government.
Government. period.
I can't agree to that. There are some legitimate functions. Unless you suppose that anarchy would be preferable.
An - without
Archy- overlords
Hmmm.
I think a little propaganda has been utilized to smear a term, that in itself isn't so bad.
I'm a bit tired of my "overlords!"
Aren't you?
Whether you call them overlords, representatives, bureaucrats, etc, lack of any sort of governing authority is the antithesis of a "society". Outside of living as a hermit, established rules of conduct are required to ensure functional relationships. The only questions are: What rules? How are they enforced?
Definitional pedantry aside, name 1 relationship that couldn't be severed due to horrendous behavior by 1 party or the other.
True. Defense, police and courts all are necessary societal functions. The question is, can these be done better in the open market? Its arguable that rich folks and other elites already don't believe government can handle these functions (ie. they hire private security forces and top legal support to supersede incompetent government services). It does take some shedding of preconceived notions to discover how private entities can better perform most if not all services. Remember, in Soviet Russia, people didn't know who would make cars if the government auto industry shut down!
Literal corporate wars sound fun.
Based.
CPA once told me they instituted withholding taxes in the 1940s because they knew there’d be a revolution if everyone was required to send in their taxes at the end of the year. Less painful to siphon it off drop by drop. The quickest way to become a fiscal conservative (at least for me) was having to pay quarterly taxes. A very different experience to put the money in your account and then have to write a check to the government. Especially realizing the money was wasted before the ink was dry.
I have said this for years. If people had to actually sit and write a check to the government every month, there would have been a revolution in the last century. And then...they go about wringing their hands in excitement to get the money back that was theirs in the first place. And, it will usually be squandered on a large purchase or vacay, because all of a sudden, windfall! It was yours in the first place dummies!! Or, if you were like us...you might get a little back from the Feds, but then it goes to pay for the privilege of living in your state...gotta love writing a check to the state of Idaho for 8K every spring. People are so ignorant of their own lives and they way they work. Slaves.
Fellow Idahoan. Sweet.
Right on...I love Idaho! Except for that one thing.
Same.
Public education.
So true about the pain of those estimated quarterly payments! Even if I trusted where it was going, the rates are too high. How have we let this go on our watch?
It's only going to pay debt...that's ALL!!
I am dealing with these incompetents right now over a legitimate $50,000 refund these guys are clearly slow-walking.
I met with them in July, and they agreed my return and claim is 100% legit.
I have my congressional office trying to get to the bottom of the "why?"
Crickets.
The whole stinking, corrupt sewer needs to be burned to the ground, and the whole of DC earth salted.
You know what’s worse than tax withholding? Foreign dividend tax withholding, where the government withholds taxes on dividends to foreign residents. The corporation has already paid corporate tax on the money. The leftover profit is distributed as a divided to owners and the government withholds taxes on dividends paid to a foreign resident the government has never and will never provide any government services to.
If there’s a tax treaty between us and the country in question, they should be able to apply any tax paid to the US to their local taxes.